In 2020, the Florida Democratic Party has state legislative nominees in every district except one, the State House 5th district seat. Every election year, Florida has 20 State Senate races and 120 State House races. Sometimes there is a special election or two as well, but this post excludes them.

This is the first year since 1994 that there have been more Democratic nominees for the Florida legislature than Republican nominees for the legislature. In addition, it is easily the most impressive Florida Democratic slate of legislative candidates for the period 1994 to the present. Normally, because Florida filing fees are so high, the Democratic Party always fails to run legislative nominees in dozens of districts. Out of the 140 districts, here are the number of races with no Democratic nominee in the past: 1994 33; 1996 38; 1998 56; 2000 37; 2002 68; 2004 66; 2006 55; 2008 39; 2010 45; 2012 59; 2014 53; 2016 50; 2018 12.

Obviously the Democratic Party of Florida this year made an effort to virtually fill its legislative tickets. This year the Florida Republican Party lacks legislative nominees in 26 districts.

This year, there are two Libertarian legislative nominees on the ballot, and 14 independent candidates.

Early on October 2, President Trump announced that he and his wife have tested positive for COVID. It is conceivable that he will wish to resign as the Republican presidential nominee, but at least some of the ballots have been printed in all states. Hundreds of thousands of votes have already been cast.

It is important to remember that only twelve states have laws that presidential electors who vote “faithlessly” are replaced on the spot at the meeting at which electoral votes are cast. They are Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and Washington. Some of the other states punish electors who vote “disobediently”, but the electoral votes cast by the “disobedient” electors are still valid. Therefore, in 39 jurisdictions that have electoral votes, if the Republican National Committee replaces President Trump with another nominee, the Republican electors can vote for the new nominee even if the new nominee’s name was not on the November ballot.

The twelve states named above all passed some variation of the “Uniform Faithful Presidential Electors Act” in the last decade. The group that first wrote that type of law, the Uniform Law Commission, did not take into account the possibility of the death of a nominee. However, when the Indiana, Michigan, and Utah legislatures passed that law, they did amend their version of the Act, so as to let electors have discretion if the winner of the popular vote in their state had died.